


Like Weeds

by corvids_5



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Force Ghost Leia Organa, Grief/Mourning, Post TROS, Regression, some sort of hope
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-06
Updated: 2020-01-06
Packaged: 2021-02-27 16:14:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22139881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/corvids_5/pseuds/corvids_5
Summary: There is something inside of her. A jumbled mess of blackness only mirrored by a wall of green. There are weeds growing inside of her and she can't wait to watch them grow.
Relationships: Rey & Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 4
Kudos: 25





	Like Weeds

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kaybohls](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaybohls/gifts).



> This was something that just came to me. There is no rhyme or reason behind this story, it was just something that needed to come out of me. 
> 
> Written for a dear friend.

Before she leaves the planet she hugs Finn and Poe.

She idles through space for three days, not really knowing where she is going, not knowing what it is that is calling to her. She leaves because there is a blackness inside of her, a blackhole that can’t seem to stitch itself back up. So, she leaves to find a place to meditate, to practice, to heal.

When she finally lands, her destination is a sandy heated rock and it greets her feet as she leaves the familiar confines of the Falcon. This planet feels familiar, yet different and she sets to roaming for the place that calls to her.

She finds it one evening, as the two suns set.

She wraps her former masters lightsabers in a strip of leather cloth and she wills the ground to open, too swallow them whole.

That night she finds a bed, deep in an old farm and she rests her head.

She feels heavy, like she is floating in space.

Cold.

Lifeless.

Dead.

A beeping stirs her from her slumber. The beeping is incessant, as she rolls from the tattered bed she now calls her own. It has been left without an occupant for far too long.

Warm sand greets her bare feet as she lands with a soft thud. The suns have yet to rise, but the warm air has laid waste, touching every grain, infusing them with heat.

Rey reaches for the orange and white droid that blinks and beeps up at her. She smiles as she tugs the antenna on top of its head, tweaking it.

She is sitting now when her fingers find her hair and she rolls three tight buns at the back of her head, this is a movement she knows all too well. It is like staring out over an empty dessert, like she is now and she thinks that this scene is regression, like pulling weeds on the surface of D’Qar, how they always grew back.

The droid beeps again and a sigh escaped from her still smiling lips.

"Tomorrow," she says, "Tomorrow I will go."

She knows it is a lie and BB‐8 knows this too, but this is their routine.

They wake. She lies, practices forms, meditates and then, when her body aches with delicious soreness she will try to close her eyes and sleep.

Rey continues to stare out into the emptiness and she knows that across the dunes Finn and Poe are waiting for her. She turns the beacon strapped to her wrist on and let's it ping, it marks her alive and well, or as alive and well as she can possibly claim to be.

It's all they asked, to just let them know she is still alive.

They wait in a run down cantina, Mos Eisley, Finn tells her over one of their rare communications. She knows this shady little bar as she has frequented it often, listened to tales of adventures it's inhabitants have brought back. Though, it isn't just tales they have brought back, there are also scars.

She thirsts for the adventures on Devaron, how the bandaras swarm the beaches, how their mating call is unbearable to hear. As she sits in the shadows of the bar, she wonders if that is how she sounds at night, as she howls into her tattered pillow, spilling tears of loss and grief.

The inhabitants press her for her adventures, her tales, her secrets turned to scars. She relents, under the influence of one too many cloudy concoctions. She doesn't return the next day and all the days that follow.

The beacon on her wrist beeps again as the sound snaps her from her thoughts. It beeps for a third time, one for every moon she has dreamed under before she clicks it off and sets her mind to wander the dunes.

There is a place she goes to practice her forms. It's far away from what she now knows, is Lars Farm. She rides her speeder hard to get to it, its secluded and she goes alone. It is a cavernous pit, barren and shaded. There are dunes of sand that tower on all sides and she gives little thought to what would happen if the wind picks up or if the ground should shake.

She dives head first. Lost in the tumble over the edge, like falling into a sink pit, into water, into a lovers arms.

As she falls she does so knowing BB-8 speeds off in the direction of Poe, to relay information to his former master. It's for her good the droid will tell her, because they need to know.

She can't really disagree.

Neither understand her need to do this. Out of the two she thought Finn would surely understand. Yet, when she senses his butting presence it is a lack of understanding that greets her.

He doesn't understand he tells her, it has been so long he says, months he spits out. Rey can only watch him from the puck that's on the table. She wants to scream at him. Does he not know that a planet killer has struck her heart? Not sense the disturbance with Ben gone? Does not he know what it feels like to miss a part of himself?

Maybe she should ask Rose what she thinks, and as she stares at Finn's holographic face, she wants to tell him that there are weeds inside of her. There are fleshy little green shrubs of life that have burrowed so deep and it feels like Ben put them there, like sprinkling seed along her soul and they are growing and tangling her up inside.

The fall feels long and when Rey finally lands, the pit is slightly cooler than above as warm air still circulates despite the lack of direct sunlight. Rey thinks the sand must miss the warm delicate kisses the twin suns give.

Rey will walk a few paces, until she is deeper in the cavern and in the solace of a more secluded atmosphere. Her breathing steadys, she reaches out and ignites her blade. 

Vaapad comes easy to her. She feels it inside of her, it's always been there, brimming at the seam when she was a child on Jaku. A sand rat, they called her, junker, scavenger. Many a night she foraged with her teeth barred and nails sharp. This is the form she knew even before she knew any existed.

When she fought Kylo Ren in that snowy field it was fury and revenge coiled around her bleeding heart. When she fought him on the remnants of the Death Star it was with quick strikes of anger, so lost in the rush to attack, to harm, to kill. She had stabbed him, felt his force signature pulsate and waver as she let realization crash over her.

He was distracted and she had capitalized on that moment of distraction, that moment of rare weakness. Now, that time has passed she knows this was not weakness. This moment she so desperately wishes to erase from her memory as his pained face still haunts her. He had fought with such ferocity, yet controlled enough to maintain the ability to track and to feel his mother slowly departing from the living world, becoming one with the force.

Rey slashes through the air, her yellow blade buzzing as it cuts through molecules. It brings a sense of peace inside of her that she still knows this. That what is inside of her still translates to this.

Perspiration beads across her forehead and her muscles strain as she strikes and moves through each form. She practices with diligence, she perfects to the best of her novice capabilities. The suns are still high above her, she can still feel the warm air as she sucks it greedily into her lungs.

Rey will practice until her bones ache, until she is left to contemplate when that ache began.

When the suns do finally set she climbs from the pit and rides her speeder home, where she knows BB-8 will be waiting for her. Rey will arrive, dismount, settle her belongings, clean off in the fresher, hitting the hot spots only, until she finally gives into the gnawing hunger she has worked into her body.

Dinner is always a sorry excuse for a meal.

At night when sleep eludes or dreams haunt her, Rey thinks that if miracles can happen then they can happen here. On this desolate piece of rock that birthed the greatest Jedi the galaxy has seen.

So, she stays awake and meditates, reaching, searching for the part of her that is missing.

Rey has watched the twin suns rise and fall, relinquishing control of the sky too triplets of a more tranquil and pearly hue. Two hundred and seventy moons she has counted, and with each passing day and night the ache in her bones, her soul does not cease.

"Be with me," she breathes as she sits, legs crossed on her bed. She has spent days turned months, chanting those three simple words. Clinging to the desperate hope that a voice long gone will whisper, something, anything, back to her.

She has traded one sand planet for another and her parents for her departed lover and she knows that this, too, is regression.

"Be with me," she whispers into the void, into the cool night air as her ankles press firmly together.

This is how each night is, a desperate search into the dark. There are nights when she doesn't care who comes, so long as someone does.

In the silence of her meditation her mind whispers to herself …

_"I wanted to be with you forever."_

She wants to scream.

_"I wanted to take your hand…"_

There are tears, she feels them, prickling at the corners of her eyes. Grinding like sand against the delicate layers that compose them.

_"Ben…"_

Her ankles clamp against one another and her back pulls straight like someone has pulled the bits of sinew and muscle that has intertwined like weeds with her spine.

A whisper, a hum, a soft brush across her mind, her soul and she howls. It's a cry not like any other, like the mating call of the bandaras and it shrieks across the night.

"Rey…"

She knows there are tears in her eyes, but they have not yet fallen. The voice belongs to Leia and she sits before her, her face smiling as Rey opens her eyes and slowly exhales. It has been a fortnight since she has had any answer and she is glad that it is Leia.

There was once a time when crying led to the possibility of death. Conservation of such a precious resource outweighing the need for release, but there is something inside of her that begs to relinquish the water..

When Rey finds the strength inside of her to look into the eyes of Leia Organa, she is greeted with eyes that she is familiar with, those eyes have looked at her in love and have looked at her with fear.

"Is he with you…" Rey hates that her voice is so small. Small in such a vast and empty desert.

“He wishes he could be here with you…”

Leia’s eyes are somber as Rey stares into them. She doesn't want to register Leia's words, doesn't want to possess the knowledge that _he wishes_ , because there are so many things that she wishes that she wants to know.

Through the tightness of her throat and Rey manages to finally say the words that she has scarcely let herself believe.

"You are gone, both of you… I'm so alone…"

Rey remembers a different time. One that seems like a lifetime ago. Starkiller base and the cold, fresh fallen snow that she had never seen before. It was beautiful, hauntingly so, in the glow of blue and red.

"You are not alone…" Leia echoes the very words her son had told her. Rey wants to recoil from the shimmer of a woman, the ghost.

"No one is ever really gone…" Leia says.

Rey doesn't want to hear anymore. This isn't Leia. This is some sick part of her mind. It is spitting all the words she wants to hear back at her. Rey shakes her head, until it is thrashing on her shoulders, until the three buns she ties everyday pull loose.

Her hair is as wild as her eyes, still stiff with sweat from the fury of her day. Leia smiles down at her and Rey hates the gaze. It is soft, like her sons and when she stretches out a hand Rey truly recoils, shrinks into herself. The scene is too familiar, to similar to that day, when she should have taken another. He would still be alive, they could have ruled the galaxy.

Rey feels a hand brush along her stomach and her eyebrows knit together.

"He truly does wish he could be here, but he is somewhere, where even I cannot reach him…"

Rey feels her forehead relax, feels her eyebrows unfurl and rest in their appropriate place. She had head stories, whispers of a place, a place that resides in between.

"I feel…" Rey has been so afraid to voice this. To breathe the thoughts and feelings that have lurked in the corners of her mind and heart into the universe. "I still feel him…"

Leia simply nods and smiles at her, like she knows this too. If anyone knows it is her, he was her son, it is a bond unlike any other, not even her bond with Ben could compare.

"Do you feel them, like seedlings?" Leia presses her hand against her stomach once more and smiles.

Rey feels her lower lip quivers, like weeds growing inside of her, like seedling sprinkled through her as he saved her. Yes, she does, she had known and she nods at the woman in front of her.

If miracles can happen then they can happen here.

“Don’t be afraid Rey,” Leia smiles back at her as she slowly fades into the air. 

When she closes her eyes that night she dreams. This time she no longer feels heavy, lifeless or dead. It is warmth and light that surround her and bubbles of laughter explode all around her.

This new warmth envelopes her, wraps around her in a soothing, calming mist of dew. It fills her and as she walks in her dream those bubbles of laughter pop on pins, on salt crystals, twigs and the tattered remnants of a planet killer.

“Let me see them…”

She reaches her arm out, feet still moving forward, trying to step beyond the bend. She knows that beyond is the future he saw that night many months ago. The memory is so far from her now, but the prospect of that future is almost within her reach.

“Let me see them…”

She says, never faltering as she rounds the corner, arm still out stretched and then light breaks across her eyes and she is so helplessly blinded by the purity and innocence.

They are so small, she thinks, too small to be apart of such a vast universe. They have manes of curly jet black hair between them; they giggle and laugh with one another as they run through the sand, through trees, through a river with still moving water.

_"I know that when the time comes, you’ll be the one to turn. You’ll stand with me Rey…”_

Yes, she thinks, she would have, she would have done anything for this.

She knows one day they will find their wings, earn their stripes, grow like weeds in a parched desert. Too small, she thinks as she watches them and like before there are tears in her eyes, but these don't feel like sand. They feel warm and wholesome, they feel like home.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not very well versed in the Star Wars Universe, but I did try to write something that hopefully you enjoyed.


End file.
